Top Book Blogs 11/2017

[The Millions] November Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. Let us know what you’re looking(Nov 1, 2017)

[Guardian Books Blog] Triple trouble: why book trilogies are better than film

In a handy justification for all the multi-volume fantasies cluttering my house, a statistician has calculated that they get better as they go on, while movies declineMy family has just moved house, and unpacking the endless boxes of books has reminded me of the sheer amount of fantasy we have. Guy(Nov 1, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Violent extremism

Anti-Muslim prejudice when exposed to news about terrorism(Nov 1, 2017)

[The Millions] We Are All The Same; Our Fates Are Not: On Matthew Weiner’s ‘Heather, the Totality’

This post was produced in partnership with Bloom, a literary site that features authors whose first books were published when they were 40 or older. 1. The buzz around Matthew Weiner’s debut novel, Heather, the Totality, began nearly a year ago, with the news of its acquisition by Little,(Nov 2, 2017)

Michael Oreskes, head of news at NPR, has resigned after multiple women alleged that he sexually assaulted them when he served as the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times. More men have come forward with allegations of sexual assault against actor Kevin Spacey. Deadline speculates that the(Nov 2, 2017)

In mid-September, the EPSN host Jemele Hill tweeted an entirely reasonable series of statements including “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists,” and “Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime.(Nov 2, 2017)

[Guardian Books Blog] A new chapter begins: Manchester named Unesco City of Literature

Thriving festivals, flourishing publishers and now Unesco status … Manchester’s literary scene only gets strongerWhen the announcement was made that Manchester had been awarded Unesco City of Literature status my social media feeds filled up with photographs of victorious colleagues and(Nov 2, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Changing politics of the South

Let’s relitigate the Civil War(Nov 2, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: After New York terrorist attack

ISIS’s defeat in Iraq and Syria makes attacks like New York inevitable(Nov 2, 2017)

[Book Forum] DAILY REVIEW: Wenners and Losers

A new biography charts the history of Rolling Stone(Nov 3, 2017)

[The Millions] Who is Greek?

1. Last week, Greeks and people of Greek descent around the world commemorated the events of October 28, 1941, a day not remembered as a revolution or victory, but a day of saying no—literally. Called “Oxi Day,” the holiday memorializes the fateful moment when Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas(Nov 3, 2017)

Remember, remember … from Shakespeare to James Shapiro to the website that deals in political scandal, the name of Guy Fawkes is literary dynamiteThe gunpowder plot’s literary legacy began almost immediately and is remarkably stellar. In 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, James Shapiro(Nov 3, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Silicon Valley is so bad at politics

America’s tech entrepreneurs are Democrats not libertarians, but they may be changing the Democratic Party(Nov 3, 2017)

[Book Forum] PAPER TRAIL: Gothamist and DNAinfo shut down by owner

Local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist were shut down yesterday by owner Joe Ricketts. The decision comes one week after the New York offices of the company voted to unionize, and will affect 115 employees. In a post on the website, Ricketts wrote that while he was proud of his reporters for(Nov 3, 2017)

The dirty little secret is most on the Right care more about winning than policy(Nov 3, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Leading the Fed

Who is Jerome Powell, Trump’s pick for the nation’s most powerful economic position?(Nov 3, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Blowing up American politics

Trump really is making us all stressed as hell(Nov 3, 2017)

[The Millions] Civil War & Historical Stupidity

Ta-Nehisi Coates wants to make America less stupid about the Civil War. He recommends five books we should all read to gain a better understanding of American history during this war and assures us that “I’ve tried to think very hard about readability, and to offer books you might actually(Nov 4, 2017)

[The Millions] Mary McCarthy’s Recycled Fiction

Perhaps best known for her fiction, specifically her classic The Group, Mary McCarthy became a novelist almost by chance. “McCarthy was good at recycling – a term which she used herself – and good, also, as she admitted, at plagiarizing her own life. Nevertheless, her fiction lives, and(Nov 4, 2017)

[The Millions] A 20 Year Overnight Success

Joe Fassler interviews recent MacArthur Genius and Year-in-Reading alum Viet Thanh Nguyen on the myth of overnight success, balancing an academic career while still finding time to write novels and the sacrifices all writers must make. Over at Electric Literature. The post A 20 Year Overnight(Nov 4, 2017)

[The Millions] And the Kirkus Prize Goes to…

The winners of the 2017 Kirkus Prize have been announced: Lesley Nneka Arimah‘s What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky for fiction; Jack E. Davis‘s The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea for non-fiction; and Cherie Dimaline‘s The Marrow Thieves for young(Nov 5, 2017)

[The Millions] The Poem Heard Round the World

“It’s really strange to have the success of a poem be so directly tied to people processing grief. It’s a strange thing, because it’s a blessing and a curse.” The Rumpus interviews poet Maggie Smith about her new collection, Good Bones, her viral poem that shares its name, and(Nov 5, 2017)

[The Millions] Sincerely, John Updike

“James Schiff, an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, is working on a volume of Updike’s letters and has unearthed thousands of letters, postcards, and notes the author sent to complete strangers who wrote to him.” The Guardian writes about an in-progress(Nov 6, 2017)

[Book Forum] PAPER TRAIL: Donna Brazile to Critics: “Go to Hell”

Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile has come under fire for her new tell-all political memoir Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. Brazile has been deeply critical of Hillary Clinton, and in interviews she has called(Nov 6, 2017)

[Guardian Books Blog] Poem of the week: Hansel in College by Tyler Mills

Weaving a different work by Gwendolyn Brooks into her own, Mills makes their parallel stories sing togetherHansel in CollegeI did not believe in a “we”:only you, smoking in the street, hardly real.I put that thought in your mind, you said, the coolbrown of your eyes too round. Wewere two stone(Nov 6, 2017)

[The Millions] Must-Read Poetry: November 2017

Here are eight notable books of poetry publishing in November. Saudade by Traci Brimhall Gorgeous and searing, Brimhall’s poems are rooted in the marriage of myth, mysticism, and mystery. Collected with the breadth and power of a novel, but delivered in discrete scenes and dreams, Saudade is one(Nov 6, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Drone stories

Rolling the dice with unmanned aerial vehicles(Nov 6, 2017)

[Guardian Books Blog] Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of themAre you on Instagram? Then you can be featured here by tagging your books-related posts with #GuardianBooksScroll down for our favourite literary linksRead more Tips, links and suggestions blogsWelcome to this week’s blog,(Nov 6, 2017)

[Book Forum] OMNIVORE: Way bigger

Purge upends a longstanding system(Nov 6, 2017)

[Book Forum] VIDEO: Reggie Yates in conversation with Clara Amfo

(Nov 6, 2017)

[The Millions] The Story Is Never the Whole Story: The Millions Interviews Daniel Mendelsohn

Daniel Mendelsohn is one of the most prominent classicists in America today. A contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, he’s also a professor at Bard College. His 2006 book The Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award(Nov 6, 2017)

Russell Hoban worked and reworked his story to create his narrator’s strange, post-apocalyptic vernacular. It makes for difficult but rewarding reading“Riddley Walker just is difficult to read,” says Will Self in his introduction to the novel. “There’s no point in denying it.” I(Nov 7, 2017)

[The Millions] Can Literature Make Us Better People?

In 2012, the novelist Toni Morrison gave a lecture titled “Goodness: Altruism and the Literary Imagination” at Harvard Divinity School. Prompted, she says, by the response of the Amish community to the 2006 school shooting (in which a young man lined up 10 girls along the blackboard in a small,(Nov 7, 2017)

Out this week: Mean by Myriam Gurba; They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib; Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda; Radio Free Vermont by Bill McKibben; a new translation of Homer’s The Odyssey; and Heather, the Totality by Matthew Weiner. For more on these(Nov 7, 2017)